There’s an old story variously ascribed to any number of inscrutable Chinese men: how do you get the cat to bite a hot pepper? Zhou En Lai (or Mao, Chiang Kai Chek, or possibly that bloke who taught Grasshopper on the TV) asks his students. Fool 1 (for such stories always require at least two fools to counterpoint the intelligence of the Master) says that you simply force it down his throat.

Ah, no, you cannot use force—so Fool 2 says—mix it in with the cat meat (no, no, the meat meant for cats, not the meat of cats, despite this being a Chinese story) and is told that no, you must not fool the cat either. The answer of course is that you shove the hot chili pepper up the cat’s bum and it’ll be glad to bite it. And now to move from mythical Chinese sages to the distinctly non-mythical Federal Government.

How do you get Americans to buy lots of Treasury Bonds? We have deficits as far into the future as the eye can see. Someone, somewhere, has to keep buying the debt so that no politician ever has to feel a cold wind around his reelection prospects. Not everyone in government is actually a fool (it’s the elected part where incidence is higher than that in the general population, not the bureaucracy) so they’ve noted that there’s a few trillion dollars in the 401(k) accounts of the nation. So how can we get that money “invested” in Treasury Bonds rather than in something productive?

We can’t force people to do it, that would cause a revolution, despite what some people think is being mooted. We also cannot fool the people as others seem to think will happen. So we’re not going to confiscate the 401(k)s in return for a federal pension, nor are we going fool people into thinking that such would be a good idea. What we’re going to do is to make everyone want to buy Treasury Bonds with their hard-earned pension savings.

We’ll start with a note in the Federal Register. Much wise chin-stroking about how not enough people convert their capital into annuities as they age. I can tell you how the next stages go because this is what has been done in my native Britain over the past 15 years or so.

“The end result is that we’ve convinced the cat that it wants to bite the chili pepper, that our pensions, our savings we’ve spent a lifetime accumulating, will now have Joe Biden only a heartbeat away from determining their value.”

Bring in a rule that the majority (75 percent in the UK) of pension savings must be converted to an annuity by a certain age (75 years). Annuities are of course sold by insurance companies and the like, separately, and a few years apart so that no one really notices. Then change the rules on what said companies selling annuities can use to fund them. Instead of the long sufficient mix of a broad range of financial instruments, insist that they use bonds matching the expected payout maturities of the annuities. Then, again a little later, slip in an insistence that the bonds being used must be safe. Triple A, “AAA” for example. And who is it left that actually has AAA bonds? Yes, that’s right, in the UK it’s pretty much the Government itself and alone. In the US it’s the Feds who are the last people left standing.

Just to really hammer the point home you then insist that there should be no foreign currency risk either: such annuities must be supported by AAA bonds in the currency which the annuities are paid out in. Therefore, the only thing left for the insurance companies to invest in to produce the annuities are long term government bonds. We’ve managed to get another $2.5 trillion or so, which must be invested in them without at any point actually saying that your pension now depends upon the size of the US deficit, and what the size of the national debt does to inflation and the dollar.

It should be said that there’s nothing particularly or specifically wrong with any of these individual steps: annuities are good things, bonds are better than more volatile investments to fund annuities, yes, top quality bonds are better than lower quality. But the end result is that we’ve convinced the cat that it wants to bite the chili pepper, that our pensions, our savings we’ve spent a lifetime accumulating, will now have Joe Biden only a heartbeat away from determining their value.

Yes, as with the cat desperately gnawing it’s own entrails out, the relationship between our money and the government is basic and fundamental. We are once again being asked to drop our trousers, grab our ankles, and brace ourselves for the reaming that is to come. But by framing the rules properly the rapists will be able to show that we really did ask for it.

]]>Articles by Tim WorstallLeave It to the Marketstag:takimag.com,2010:article/1.87242010-05-12T04:00:47Z2010-08-10T13:44:49ZTim Worstalltimworstall@takimag.com

If the Dow plunges a thousand points in 10 minutes, what should we do about it? Other than scrape that brown stuff off the insides of our underpants as we contemplate the wreckage of our retirement plans?

How about this as a truly radical suggestion? Let’s do nothing about it. Bupkiss, sweet FA.

Some would say what we should do depends upon what the cause was. Perhaps it was fragmented markets and circuit breakers as those who know what they’re talking about suggest? Or perhaps, as those who don’t know what they’re talking about, like Senator Chris Dodd, we should have more of what the senator always says is the solution to everything: “Mr. Dodd [added] that he had called for hearings on the matter.” More of Senator Dodd that is. Yes, more grandstanding by the ignorant, just what we need.

“We absolutely never will create a system to manage anything, whether it be food delivery, financial markets, or the provision of a suitable number of orgasms which will work as advertised, each and every time.”

This does require, I agree, actually thinking about the problem, behavior not all that common in today’s world. But if we do think about it, we’ll see that doing nothing is almost certainly the correct answer. We’re humans, you see, and as innumerable religions (and wives) have tried to point out to us over the years, that means that we’re fallible: so is anything that we try to create. We absolutely never will create a system to manage anything, whether it be food delivery, financial markets, or the provision of a suitable number of orgasms which will work as advertised, each and every time.

So what we actually want to try and do is find systems which are good, yes, as good as we can make them, sure, but what we really want is a system that recovers from failure as quickly as possible: thus the invention of Viagra for that last of our trio there. With financial markets the clue is already there in that word “markets”.

Yes, the Dow dropped a thousand points, computer trading programs shut down across the nation, IRAs, 401(k)s, and the like took a beating, and there are tens of thousands of bureaucrats who would love to know why today. But note also what happened. Twenty minutes later the whole thing had blown over, markets were open and trading quite happily and prices were back to roughly where they had been. Can any of us think of any system at all which would solve such a problem as quickly as this one got solved?

This is the point about markets, markets in their wider sense, which is so under appreciated. Sure they go kablooie at times, nothing ever made or designed by human beings doesn’t. But markets also contain their own solutions to such kablooieness as we’ve just seen.

Don’t forget, when the first intimations that Enron’s accounting wasn’t entirely kosher came out the markets closed them down and sent them into bankruptcy before the first bureaucrat had even managed to sharpen his pencil. And the SEC ignored Harry Markoupolis over Madoff for how many years was it? Five? When he’d actually provided them with the detailed description of exactly what was going on and even how they could prove it?

Leaving things to markets is the very definition of neo-liberal: sure, that’s unpopular right now. But when markets do actually work, do actually right themselves, shouldn’t we carry on being neo-liberal? It does, after all, seem to work, which is more than can be said of either Senator Dodd or his ideas.

]]>Articles by Tim WorstallHow Earth Day Became a Totalitarian Movement Straight Out of 1984tag:takimag.com,2010:article/1.87562010-04-22T14:45:45Z1999-11-30T00:00:00ZTim Worstalltimworstall@takimag.com

Yes, it’s Earth Day again, the day we’re all supposed to think about Mother Gaia and what we can do to worship her in the correctly communal and communitarian manner. One little tip for you though (stolen shamelessly from PJ O’Rourke, as most peoples’ good jokes are): Have a look at any of the various events going on around the place and give the babe/beast ratio a quick check.

Things that are fashionable, ahead of the curve, have very high babe ratios: all the good looking women are there. When there’s a preponderance of mutts and beasts you know that the cause has passed its peak and become, like politics, showbiz for the ugly. Earth Day failed the ratio check starting some three decades ago and this year won’t be any different.

However, we do have something different for this year: a concerted attempt to use children as informers on their parents.

….launching this Earth Day is Green My Parents, a nationwide effort to inspire and organize kids to lead their families in measuring and reducing environmental impact at home. Not just on Earth Day, but every day.

...a movement that activates & enlists kids to lead their families in measuring & reducing environmental impact at home & “challenge” their parents to share savings with kids.

Anybody else recognize this? Yes, that’s right, it’s straight out of the totalitarian playbook. Pretty much every foul dictatorship has used the children to tell on those parents who aren’t following the correct party line. Pavlik Morozov was the one the Soviet Union held up for praise. It is right and just that children should inform on their parents to the State: a more sickening traducement of family life it being difficult to imagine.

“You’ll all have noted the other part of this pincer movement: endless lessons in the more wacko forms of environmental nonsense and a marked lack of training in critical thinking. So now the brainwashed little poppets are to study you, inform and nag you and no doubt, coming soon, tell teacher that you had a hot shower.”

But of course it wasn’t just the Soviets that did this: the fascist regimes of mid 20th century Europe were just as joyous in their use of children to enforce conformity in parents. Pol Pot famously used children as informers to make sure that all did as commanded, the children even being given the power over who was executed.

The reason for all of this is of course that children are both very easy to lie to and also very easy to brainwash. Parents are, at least legally they are, competent adults and as such they’re capable of working out what is important and what isn’t. Green My Parents is actively suggesting that all should bathe in cold water, just as one of their more trivially stupid ideas. An adult would point out that returning to the medieval highly infrequent wipe with a cold rag just isn’t sensible. A child can be lied to until it actually believes that this will make a difference to the polar bears.

You’ll all have noted, at least those with school age children will have noted, the other part of this pincer movement: endless lessons in the more wacko forms of environmental nonsense and a marked lack of training in critical thinking or the evaluation of evidence. So now the brainwashed little poppets are to study you, inform and nag you and no doubt, coming soon, tell teacher that you had a hot shower.

One of the great books of the last century was George Orwell’s 1984. A book which contained a character called Parsons.

He is captured when his children claim that he repeatedly and unknowingly spoke against the Party in his sleep and he is last seen in the Ministry of Love, proud of having been betrayed by his orthodox children.

Crippled Jesus Christ on a crutch people, 1984 was a warning, not an instruction manual!

No, you don’t have to be clever or intelligent to either get or be rich. Some achieve great wealth via the Lucky Sperm Club, others through just being in the right place at the right time. Michael Jordan, for example, would not have made a great fortune in the 1920s when basketball players were paid nothing and in the 1820s he’d have been a slave. But today’s proof that dimness is entirely compatible with riches that would have made Croesus blush comes to us from United for a Fair Economy’s “Responsible Wealth” network.

They were the subject of Dana Milbank’s column in which these fools stuffed with the riches of capitalism demanded that Congress tax them more.

“I’m in favor of higher taxes on people like me,” declared Eric Schoenberg, who is sitting on an investment banking fortune. He complained about “my absurdly low tax rates.” …..“I would with pleasure sacrifice the income,” agreed millionaire entrepreneur Jeffrey Hollender.

“There are those who would prefer to posture in public about how saintly they are (“Look, I’d love to pay higher taxes!”) without having to go through the pain of actually being saintly (by, you know, actually paying higher taxes).”

As Milbank points out, there is indeed a way in which such people can pay higher taxes. Simply write a check and send it to the government. Here in fact.

Gifts to the United States
U.S. Department of the Treasury
Credit Accounting Branch
3700 East-West Highway, Room 622D
Hyattsville, MD 20782

Now OK, this might seem trivial, that there are those who would prefer to posture in public about how saintly they are (“Look, I’d love to pay higher taxes!”) without having to go through the pain of actually being saintly (by, you know, actually paying higher taxes); hypocrisy in public is hardly an unusual feature of our society.

But economists would go further than this. There’s this sneaky little idea they’ve got called “revealed preferences”. We shouldn’t take what people say at face value. We should look at what they actually do and then work out what they really believe from their actions. Yes, this is trivial and obvious, like so much of the dismal science. We don’t take the married man’s loud announcements of undying sexual fidelity seriously: we look to see whether he’s cruising the truck stops for a $30 blow job or whether he’s boffing his secretary. So it is with tax, we don’t and shouldn’t take seriously loud protestations about how much more tax people are willing to pay. We should go and look at how much extra they do pay.

This is something I did do a few years back. I asked the people who run that “Gifts to the United States” account how much they got in a year. For 2005 it was $2,671,628.40. Two and a half million bucks spread over some 8 million millionaire households in the country. Maybe 20 cents per household. I also did the same thing with the British Treasury and they gave me the actual number of donors to the similar account: 5 people of whom four were dead leaving bequests. Yes, this does mean that the sum total of live people who thought that taxes were too low in the UK in 2005 was one solitary person out of 65 million.

Which means that we can subject statements like this to a little test:

But Miller also pointed to a surprising finding in the poll: Among families earning more than $250,000, fully 64 percent favor raising taxes on themselves.

They’re lying: if they really supported paying higher taxes themselves then they would already be paying higher taxes themselves. They’re not so doing so they don’t so support higher taxes upon themselves. As I’ve already said, public posturing about moral virtue isn’t unusual in our society. It’s just that’s there’s no reason we should take it seriously.

Good looking man who can sing and dance is gay: well, that’s a shocker really, isn’t it?

“I am proud to say that I am a fortunate homosexual man. I am very blessed to be who I am.”

And with that Ricky Martin shocked, well, shocked almost no one really. While maiden aunts aren’t as dim about sex as everyone seems to assume (you’ve got to know something about it to remain maiden) I still doubt that there were any such even remotely unaware that Ricky was not quite as other men, that his interests were those of a minority. A vibrant, inclusive, nothing at all wrong with that minority, but a minority nonetheless. Even if his suspicious ability to boogie to a beat were not enough his twin sons born to a surrogate back in 2008 were a clue: if hetero he really wouldn’t have any shortage of those willing to bear them for him now would he?

“Can we please stop having these people coming out of closets? Really, seriously, it’s over. We’ve got it now and no, we don’t need yet another ‘role model’ and we really don’t need another publicity hound taking to the media to tells us of their sexual preferences.”

But much more important than whether Ricky prefers to pitch and catch is that I simply don’t care. Just as I don’t care whether Rosie O’Donnell does play hide the salami or not, has to floss after sex or not. Whether Monica Lewinsky spits or swallows: these just aren’t things that interest in the slightest. As PJ O’Rourke pointed out there are times when the differences between men and women are unimportant, like when trading bonds, and times they’re important, when trying to make babies. Similarly, how consenting adults like to take their sex is simply not interesting if you’ve no desire or intention (or chance of course) to ever have sex with them. As long as Ricky pumps out the bubblegum Latino pop, Rosie keeps telling decent jokes and Monica being the butt of them we’ll all get along fine. I’m no more interested in their predilections, I should be no more interested in them, than they are in mine for middle aged women (perhaps to be correctly uxorious I should say woman there).

We all recognize that there was a time when having sexual interests outside the mainstream was indeed dangerous. Not just to careers either, I can still remember reading with astonishment a newspaper report of a Supreme Court case over whether Georgia could arrest a man for giving another a blow job. What? This absurdity even made it to the first level of the court system? Wasn’t tossed by the desk sergeant? Perhaps I shouldn’t be quite so dismissive, given that homosexuality was only legalized in England a few years after my birth but seriously, this is now 2010.

That people have different sex drives, OK, we get it. But can we please stop having these people coming out of closets? Really, seriously, it’s over. We’ve got it now and no, we don’t need yet another “role model” and we really don’t need another publicity hound taking to the media to tell us about their sexual preferences.

The New York Daily News polled their readers as to whether they already knew if Ricky was gay or not before the announcement. 84% said yes. Of course it was obvious, and only 16% agreed that they were thick as dirt. Despite the existence of People Magazine no, the media isn’t run for that dumbest 16% of the population so, sorry folks, but if you’ve not cavorted out of that closet yet just don’t bother. The Nirvana of sexual freedom really has arrived.

What’s wrong with American trade? In short, the people America has negotiating its trade agreements. One Robert E. Lighthizer, a deputy trade rep under Reagan, took to the New York Times this week to tells us all what was wrong with current and recent trade policy. What he managed to show is that if people holding these sorts of views are the ones negotiating trade pacts on our behalf then we’re all ruined.

I’ll just start with his gross misconception of the effects of VAT. His claim is that because you don’t pay VAT on exports but you do on imports then countries which have a VAT unfairly subsidize exports. This is what is known in technical circles as “insane”. A VAT is a sales tax and in the US sales taxes are not imposed upon exports and they are upon imports. Further, he claims that the US relies mostly upon income taxes for revenue while the countries that have VATs rely mostly upon that VAT. He seems not to realize that the VAT is, just like sales tax, imposed on top of all of the other taxes.

But that isn’t his really great and grand mistake. No, he’s committed the ultimate sin in the consideration of trade and production. All of his complaints are about how current trade rules make things difficult for producers and exporters. All of his desired actions are about how to make things easier for producers and exporters. All of which is entirely the wrong way to think about either production or exports.

We don’t run the economy for the benefit of producers and we most certainly shouldn’t run it for them. The aim is to give consumers the maximum possible satisfaction given current resources and technology levels. Adam Smith pointed this out so it’s hardly a new idea: the sole purpose of any and all production is consumption. So if, as Mr. Lighthizer complains, China subsidizes its exports, this is a benefit to the American consumer. Our correct answer to this is to say “Thank you, please may I have some more” (or, as Calvin Coolidge allegedly said, when the messenger delivered to the Oval Office his first paycheck as President, “Thank you. Please come again”).

“There’s a very simple point to be made about trade. Imports are going shopping. Exports are just the shit we do so we can go shopping.”

All of his evidence falls afoul of this wildly incorrect viewpoint. Developing nations are growing faster than the US and therefore we shouldn’t open American markets to them. What? What has that to do with trade? The aim and point of trade is to give American consumers access to the glories of world production, not to give American producers the ability to sell to the world. All the talk of market opening offers not being made, of different labor and environmental regulations elsewhere, of again Chinese currency manipulation. They’re all entirely irrelevant.

They are, quite simply, nothing at all to do with what America’s attitude toward trade should be. That attitude is, again quite simply, that some people out there in that great big wide world are making things which are better, cheaper, different, sexier, than what is made in the US and Joe Six-Pack and his wife would quite like some of it please. And it ain’t the business of government to stand between Joe Six-Pack and what he and his wife would like. That other governments deny their own citizens the bounty of American production is an irrelevance. As the late great Cambridge economist Joan Robinson, said, just because someone else is throwing rocks in their harbors doesn’t mean we should throw rocks in our own.

And this ignorance of the very point of trade is what has made America’s trade policy so dysfunctional over the decades. That we’ve got someone arguing these things, as Mr. Lighthizer is, who was a trade rep for the country, as Mr. Lighthizer was, is simply appalling. It would be like appointing a trade union leader because he says the point of trade unions is to lower the workers’ wages. Appointing a General who said surrender is the best means of defence.

There’s a very simple point to be made about trade. Imports are going shopping. Exports are just the shit we do so we can go shopping. Unless and until America’s trade representatives understand that point then we’re always going to have an entirely dysfunctional trade policy.

Kate Winslet and Sam Mendes: Hollywood power couple marriage ends up on the trash heap. Does this come as a surprise to anyone?

There are those of us who thought such was inevitable right from the start. The chance that two self-absorbed narcissists (as artists almost inevitably are) were going to be in it for the long term was slim. It’s such an obvious part of human nature—when the cats away, mice play. Even those of us happily married and intending to remain so think that weeks and months of working thousands of miles away from our inamorata might lead to a little extramarital slap and tickle now and again.

The first clue to us cognoscenti of Winslet’s celebrity marriage dance was her first marriage. An obviously talented actress, but perhaps not such a talent in love. She made the quintessential rookie move, marrying “assistant director” Jim Threapleton at twenty-two. Such an assistant, in the British film world at least, does not mean one who is about to direct a big feature once the apprenticeship ends. It means the bloke who polishes the camera for everyone else. However, having polished cameras he’ll have an extensive address book of those he’s polished for. That first marriage ended just as Winslet herself became a worldwide star on the back of her performance in Titanic.

“If we were to be properly cynical, what need would she have now for an average-looking middle-aged husband?”

You’ve got to give her credit for two things: at least she married the guy as well as the stepping stone bit, and shes too bright to have tried that with a writer (as the old Hollywood story goes, writers being the lowest on the totem pole, they only get laid by the most irredeemably dim actresses on the make).

Next relationship is an upgrade to a director a decade older, with a firm and secure footing to his career. She could have stumbled after her first blockbuster, like many starlets have in the past. But, seven years on and she’s had six Oscar nominations (the youngest to have achieved that), and finally bagged one of the gold ego dildos. If we were to be properly cynical, what need would she have now for an average-looking middle-aged husband? And where, we wonder, is said middle-aged husband now? As the reports go, being consoled by “best friend” Rebecca Hall, who happens to be a willowy actress who could use a career boost. Ho hum.

It is of course possible to be too, too cynical, and in order to work out whether one is, we need to come up with alternative, more likely explanations. Just the seven-year itch? Or, the apparent Oscar Best Actress curse? “Everyone who has won the award has suffered a breakdown in their marriage,” say the tabs.

I wouldn’t want to have to check back through the books to see whether it’s actually true, but it appears to have just happened to Sandra Bullock. Her husband is mooted to have been cheating with a woman called Michelle Bombshell, a “tattoo model”....no, not a model for tattoos, a model with them. And from these pics, someone’s decided that inking in under arm hair would be a good idea. Sheesh, save the ink and move to France if that’s the sort of thing that interests you.

So maybe that’s it: a curse on winning the Oscar rather than pushy career move. Could be. We report and you decide, as the saying goes.

Much as it pains me to do so I fear that I must praise a left leaning economist. Dean Baker, please stand up and take your bow. He’s told the truth, always a bad career move in the political arena, about the current financial crisis and recession.

We’re not deep in the economic doo doo because Wall Streeters are greedy, not because they’re incompetent and not because they’re evil. They may be all of these things but the ordure piled up around our ears is not because of their actions or existence, but because we’ve just had a huge housing bubble. Dean’s right about how we can prove this too, we can prove it in one word: Spain.

Spain, Ireland, the UK, and the US all have deep recessions, this is true. However, Spain, uniquely, does not have a problem with its banks. They didn’t fall over, they had decent levels of reserves and have not needed bailing out by their government. Yet Spain still has a deep recession (a very deep one: unemployment among the young is now rated at 40 percent or so). So it isn’t the financial system that caused the recession.

“We know what happens when people become wealthier. They spend some of that new wealth on current consumption—whether it’s houses going up or stocks or the stamp collection from boyhood days.”

What the four countries do have in common is that they all had a huge housing boom which then burst. In the US, the bubble was $8 trillion in size. That bubble bursting is what has caused the recession: and we’d still be having a recession even if no one had ever securitised a loan, bonuses were not paid on Wall Street and mortgages came only from the neighbourhood Savings and Loan. All of these things describe what happened in Spain and yet Spain still has a recession: so it isn’t the structure of the financial system which caused it then.

For we know what happens when people become wealthier. They spend some of that new wealth on current consumption. This is true whether it’s houses going up or stocks or the stamp collection from boyhood days. This is just something people do. And when bubbles burst, as they all do, people stop that extra consumption and the technical name we give to a fall in consumption is “recession”. The collapse of the housing bubble blew a large hole in the amount consumers were willing (or able) to spend and that’s what caused everything else following, as sure as night follows day.

The importance of this cannot be understated: I think we’d all like to try and make sure that this doesn’t happen again some day, no? If that’s so, we’ve got to understand why it did happen so that we can take the appropriate steps to prevent a repeat. Which means that if we all hare off after Wall Street, lay all blame at their doors, then we’ll end up trying to reform Wall Street. But if that’s not where the problem started then we’ll not prevent the next recession, will we?

So let’s place the blame where it squarely belongs: on the housing market. Then we can try to do something to prevent the next blow-out. That something would and should be looking at interest rates. For Ireland and Spain their interest rates were way, way too low as a result of being in the Euro where rate were being set of the French and German economies, not those of Spain and Ireland. In the UK and the US rates were also too low but this was a policy choice. In both countries the central bank (Bank of England, Federal Reserve in turn) had an inflation target but that target was aimed only at the prices of goods and services. They deliberately (in the UK example, were told to ignore) ignored inflation in asset prices. So nothing was done to try and prick the bubble before it got out of hand.

Now that we’ve got the correct diagnosis of why the economy fell over we can write our prescription for stopping it happening again. Inflation targets for central banks should include asset prices as well as the prices of goods and services. Thus, in the future, interest rates will rise when a bubble is forming, stopping its inevitable bursting from becoming a system threatening event.

Sure, we might want to reform the financial system, we might be interested in curbing bonuses, restricting the power of Mammon, for all sorts of other reasons. But preventing the next recession just ain’t one of them, for it wasn’t the financial system that caused this one. It wasn’t even the central banks that did: it was what the politicians told the central banks to concentrate on. Or not concentrate on perhaps. By insisting that they ignore asset price inflation the politicians allowed the bubble to grow and made the mess, pain and dislocation of the bursting induced recession vastly worse.

Much of international discourse, international politics, is all about how they should become more like us. Quite how they should become more like us depends upon the speaker: if it’s Hillary then more attention should be given to strong, hefty, and mature women who’ve never had an original idea in their lives and if it’s Bill then more attention will be paid to strong, hefty, and young women who have some very original ideas about cigars.

The international aspects of religion are even more exclusive. Not only should they become more like us, they should become exactly like us: share our interpretations of obscure verses of a book they’ve never heard of for fear of losing their eternal souls. And in the more robust interpretations they should be forced to find out about those souls right damn now if they don’t agree.

Perhaps, as a modest proposal, we should be picking up on the ways that religions work out there and bringing those practices home? For example:

A self-styled Hindu holy man and a British Airways stewardess have been arrested in Delhi on suspicion of involvement in a multimillion-pound prostitution racket.

Having traveled on BA recently I can see why she was running the business, not staffing it, but other than that it seems like a perfectly sensible proposition. Temple prostitution is nothing new after all, it’s been common in South India for millennia and the Old Testament has many references (some of them even approving) to it.

If we were to translate this to the US just think how wonderful it could be? Churches are free of taxes so working girls would no longer have that particular bite taken out of their earnings (yes, for some decades now Uncle Sam has been asking for more than a mere pimp does). If Jimmy Swaggart had been employing, rather than merely hiring, he could have consorted with someone who didn’t look like the motel he was consorting in. Even Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker could have benefited. We’d have all been able to have a crack at Jessica Hahn and Tammy might have found someone who could help with her make up: even the most depraved of Painted Jezebels has a lighter hand with the foundation trowel. There would finally be some meaning to the name Oral Roberts—yes, matters would improve.

“That’s not the sort of sum that’s going to get Pat Robertson out of bed of a morning, but given the preponderance of lonely old women in his flock perhaps he’ll be able to make it up in volume.”

Further, we’d actually be getting something out of our attendance at church services. Currently we cough up at the collection plate to pay for their mistresses: at least things would be more honest and we’d get the warm tingly feeling of being properly and physically fucked ourselves instead of just at one remove.

Our Swami is said to have made $10 million from his business which is where we might have a problem. That’s not the sort of sum that’s going to get Pat Robertson out of bed in the morning, but given the preponderance of lonely old women in his flock perhaps he’ll be able to make it up in volume.

Some might say that this is slightly missing the point: the religious ecstasy of the Holy Rollers is supposed to be instead of sex, a replacement for it. Or that church is where you go to cleanse yourself of the sin of sexual activities. Which is to be hopelessly naïve about what actually happens in a Megachurch these days: the vacuuming of your wallet faster than any brothel madam of old would have the nerve to do.

Agape, that good natured Christian love of all is all very well in its place but there’s no reason to posit a Sky Fairy as a reason to practice it. Nor to purchase Cadillacs, fine houses, and private jets for those who take our money for scaring us into doing so. And the advantage of worshipping Eros is that we know he actually exists: he exists in every boner and damp gusset on the planet. More importantly, as we hand over our money to our fellow worshippers we know we’re getting something for it… The pain was so great, that it made me moan; and yet so surpassing was the sweetness of this excessive pain, that I could not wish to be rid of it... if that’s what just a dream about God did for St Theresa just think what we can do with the S&M subchapter.

Well, I guess that’s it, Holy Orders for me. I understand that you can get signed up for $50 these days and even the IRS agree that’s kosher. My only problem here, the only thing limiting my becoming as fat and rich as Jerry Falwell, would seem to be that another blogger has got there first:

Jesus himself seemed to have a soft spot for prostitutes. Many reputable scholars today think he may have been married to one. And Jesus showed radical inclusivity, breaking taboos by hanging out with prostitutes. So he would want us to celebrate and affirm their prostitution and give them a venue for making it their true vocation, a way of serving God by serving man—selflessly and with their whole being.

Now I know that I’m out of touch with the twenty-first century. Imagine being trumped on a matter of moral and sexual perversity by the Lutherans of all people?

I think we’ve found the secret of Paul Krugman you know. No, really, an excellent little piece in the New Yorker gives us what we need to analyze the great man. Yes, he is indeed a great man but like all of us he has his flaws and this piece gives us the necessary clues to them.

Actually, what it is: he doesn’t understand politics.

A fairly brave statement about someone who is one of the leading commentators upon politics in our day, who has worked inside the belly of the beast, and one who is clearly and obviously vastly more intelligent than you or I.

If we look back at Krugman’s work there is some excellent economics in there. And if we look at his writing there is, on top of that excellence, a man with a real gift for both writing and for explaining complex subjects so that all can grasp them (his “Ricardo’s Difficult Idea” is a masterpiece). There’s even great fun to be had in his academic work.

I’m certainly not going to try to criticise his economics…well, except for one area….for if we were to try and get into a dick measuring contest I’m the micro-penis and he’s wielding the Ron Jeremy.

However, running through that New Yorker piece is Krugman’s incredible naivety about politics and the political process. It’s laid out for us: he didn’t pay much attention to politics, he consorted only with economists, he built his career, thought about economics and not the sausage grinder of the legislatures.

His work (his writing that is, not his academic work) in the 90’s has a lot of explanation and debunking of various silly ideas floating around. He famously defended sweat shops: not because they’re good per se, but because they’re better than the alternatives on offer to those who work in them. He pointed out that higher wages do not in themselves lead to less turnover of workers, do not lead to less absenteeism and so on—as those arguing for a higher minimum wage (or even a “living wage”) argue. It is having higher wages than the others in town that does this: you offer people a better deal and you get better labor. If everyone raises wages then you don’t.

“His head may well be far above the clouds that shroud our own plans for the world but he’s incapable of understanding the slime and the mold that his plans depend upon for implementation.”

Since he’s moved to The Times he’s moved, a lot, from measuring the proposals of others to having proposals of his own. This has become much more noticeable in recent times, since Obama ascended the throne. And you can see Krugman’s frustrations being writ large.

Now whether his proposals are indeed the ne plus ultra of possible economic ideas or not isn’t the point. What he’s ignorant of is the way that politics actually works.

There’s a view that politicians are in it all for our good. Perhaps, if you dare to be cynical enough, that they’re in it for the good of those who elect them, perhaps even the interest groups that fund those election campaigns. This is the sort of naivety that disappears with most adults’ first real contact with the political classes. No, they’re not in it for us, whoever us is. They’re in it for them.

Chuck Schumer, Trent Lott, Murtha, Webb—take any politician from any part of the political spectrum. They’re in the game so that they can stay in the game. They’ll do whatever it takes to win the next election….and in the interim they’ll do whatever else they can to feather their nests. We note and expect this behavior from bankers, businessmen, the school bully and all too often from our about to be ex-spouses. There is no illogicality in noting that politicians do the same. Indeed, the failure is to expect different behavior from those who gain their jobs from our votes.

This whole, adult, view tends to come under the banner of public choice economics. Politicians and bureaucrats tend to do what is good for politicians and bureaucrats. Just like we do and just like we would if we had the opportunities that politicians and bureaucrats do.

This is the part that Krugman hasn’t absorbed yet. Assume that his ideas are wonderful, that he really does know how big the stimulus should be, how health care insurance should be reformed, how to beat Wall Street in favor of Main Street. As of course he does believe of his own ideas: then watch his frustration as the politicians don’t do what he thinks they should be doing….what is obvious to him that they should be doing. He actually trusts politicians to do the right thing by us instead of the right thing by politicians.

And that’s the error, that’s his feet of clay. His head may well be far above the clouds that shroud our own plans for the world but he’s incapable of understanding the slime and the mold that his plans depend upon for implementation. He actually thinks that politicians are trying to do the right thing.

So despite my having already lost the dick waving competition I’d suggest that there is an area of economics which Professor Krugman really does need to study. It’s that public choice theory thing, the one where we start our economics by assuming that politicians are indeed lying weasel felchers right at the beginning. The world makes so much more sense that way. It’s also so less frustrating when you see your best laid plans going the way of all mice and men, to a dusty grave, when you start with the knowledge that of course they’ll fuck it up….they’re only in it for themselves anyway.

A good place for him to start would be the Nobel Prize lecture by his fellow Laureate, James Buchanan.

]]>Articles by Tim WorstallSnowdon-Jones Is Not British Royaltytag:takimag.com,2010:article/1.88352010-02-18T04:00:43Z2010-08-10T13:55:44ZTim Worstalltimworstall@takimag.com

It’s hardly rare for social climbers on one side of the Atlantic to claim connections with part of the elite on the other side. We had in the UK just recently some no name from flyover country insisting that he was a Rockefeller. Managed to keep that one going for a decade or so. However, things don’t always work out that well which is what interests me in this report about a model and party girl in Manhattan called Kashmir Snowdon-Jones.

No, not what she’s alleged to have done, rather, what the background is alleged to be:

Kashmir, currently represented by Nous Model Management, is the daughter of British architect David Snowdon-Jones. She is the former stepdaughter of socialite Emma Snowdon-Jones.
Her father traces his lineage back to Lord Snowdon, a famous photographer who was married to Princess Margaret and sits in the House of Lords.

Fascinating stuff for those of us who understand the British aristocracy.

The blond beauty, whose family claims to be descended from British bluebloods…

Bluebloods eh? As someone who has worked with an Earl, a Baron, and a Life Baron; shared an apartment with an Hon; and once stole a girlfriend off a Viscount (although that last of that inferior, Irish, aristocracy it is true, and, err, she left me for the heir to a Marquessate)—if I could just explain what is wrong with this claim?

We can see where they’re coming from of course: Lord Snowdon is more formally known as the Earl of Snowdon and his last name is indeed Jones (something really not uncommon among those from Wales). We might not expect, or even insist, that the rubes of Manhattan will understand that this conjunction of the names Snowdon and Jones does not equate to having the family name, “Snowdon-Jones”. So we’ll have to explain why not.

“It should be said that Kashmir is indeed a beauty and I’d be delighted to offer an intensive, residential course in these matters so that we can concoct a better cover story.”

The first point is that the Earl Snowdon is not in fact a blueblood. This is an apellation reserved for those who inherit their titles: he did not, he married it. When he married Princess Margaret it was thought an unpardonable breach of good manners that the children of a Princess might be fathered by a man with no title. Thus an old royal title (they have these things in the back cupboards like those of us with cats have ancient fur balls floating around) was dragged out, dusted down, and given to him. Various Snowdon titles have been known; it was one of those claimed by the Welsh royal family way back before 1282 when the English slaughtered the last of them. But Mr. Jones is the first Earl Snowdon: the title was chosen because Snowdon is in Wales, he is from Wales, and, well, no one really expects the royals to be all that imaginative. His background is not royal or aristocratic: he’s from minor (although artistic, the Messels are involved) provincial gentry. Nothing wrong with this—it’s a more august background than my own but blueblooded it ain’t.

Strike one therefore on this claim. Strike two is rather simpler to explain. Anthony, Earl Snowdon, is known to have four children. Two he had with the Princess, one from his second marriage, and a further illegitimate one called Penny Fry. He does indeed have a son called David but he is more generally known either as David Armstrong Jones, the Viscount Linley, or even David Linley. He makes very expensive furniture in London and is married to the heiress daughter of the Earl of Harrington. There is no David Snowdon-Jones in his line.

There’s also one further small problem which the perceptive will already have picked up on. Jones is not only a common name in Wales, it is the most common name. We’re not all that surprised when it turns into a double-barreled name then. Snowdon-Jones for example: someone called Jones from the area around Snowdon perhaps. That’s the likely source of the name our Manhattan party girl bears.

However, there’s no connection at all between this name and the man called Jones who also became the Earl Snowdon: for as a matter of fact, his name is “Armstrong Jones”. So that even if David Snowdon-Jones in Manhattan were a bastard child of Earl Snowdon (actually, with those with titles we tend not so use that word, more euphemisms like “born on the wrong side of the blanket”) his name would in fact be David Armstrong Jones.

That’s the third strike and they’rrrrrrre out!

On the other hand it should be said that Kashmir is indeed a beauty and I’d be delighted to offer an intensive, residential course in these matters so that we can concoct a better cover story.

]]>Articles by Tim WorstallPolitical Risk Is Not Economic Risktag:takimag.com,2010:article/1.88422010-02-12T05:02:54Z1999-11-30T00:00:00ZTim Worstalltimworstall@takimag.com

There’s nothing quite like a New York Times columnist for spouting gobbledegook on matters economic: perhaps only the editorials themselves are worse. Tom “Airmiles” Friedman gives us a lovely example here:

Banks, multinationals and hedge funds often hire foreign policy experts to do “political risk analysis” before they invest in places like, say, Kazakhstan or Argentina. They may soon have to add the United States to their watch lists.

Now he’s right so far, investors really are adding the US (and the UK) to their list of places where political risk is a concern. But Tom then goes on to waffle about leadership, strong government (and the lack of it), inflation, currency matters. No, these are not what people think of as political risk, these are economic risks.

Political risk is when politicians decide that they’re going to tear up the rule of law and stick it to some company or other that they or the public don’t like. Doesn’t matter what the original deal was, what it says in the contract, yeah, let’s get ‘em! Usually of course to get a short term poll boost for said politicians while right royally screwing over the long term economic health of the country.

“That’s what political risk is, that politicians are slimeballs who will never live up to their part of an agreement.”

This happened to Shell in Russia: they invested billions in the Sakhalin oil and gas projects. Once they were actually up and producing the Russian government sucked its teeth and decided to change the rules: no, you can’t export, we’ll change the royalty rates, oooh, my, see, you’ve broken an environmental law so we’ll just force you to sell the whole project, eh? Something very similar happened to BP over their investment in TNK.

Or there’s the example of the Zambian copper mines. No one would invest there because no one could be sure what the law would be next week. So a strong deal was cut: if you change those rules you’ve got to compensate us for the investments we’ve already made. Sure as eggs is eggs of course as soon as the copper was flowing again the government tried to quadruple the royalty rate, change the corporate and income tax rates and disallow depreciation charges against tax…..and they’re still desperately trying to wriggle out of paying compensation. There’s even a little case going on in El Salvador right now. A gold mining company spent $80 million prospecting and actually found gold. Under the contract, either they are allowed to lift the gold or they have to be compensated for their exploration costs. Guess what? The government in El Salvador doesn’t want to let them mine and also doesn’t want to pay back either the costs or the fee that was paid for the right to prospect.

That’s what political risk is, that politicians are slimeballs who will never live up to their part of an agreement. But why should anyone be worried that the US should be added to a list of countries where this might be a problem? Surely we don’t have these sorts of problems?

Oh Yeah? Anyone remember how the bondholders got crammed down in the GM bankruptcy? How the President of the United States overturned the settled law of the land so that his political supporters, the unions, got a better deal than they should have done?

In 1995, when oil prices were very low, Congress tried to encourage deep-water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico by giving oil companies relief from some of the royalties they incur for producing oil and gas on public land. .....Representative Edward Markey of Massachusetts hopes to put things right with a bill that would clarify the law and prevent companies from signing new leases in the gulf until they renegotiate the old ones and pay royalties that are due.

Changing the rules of the game after billions have been spent by the companies. BP, as an example, went out and spent a fortune and was able to find oil 6 miles under the Gulf: the deepest anyone has ever drilled. Now that the money has been spent and the oil company is committed, up pops a politician claiming that the rules just be changed: we didn’t really mean it you know, ha, ha, ha, just joshing. Of course we’re not going to let you keep the profits we encouraged you to go and seek, don’t be silly.

That’s what political risk is, that politicians will, well, politicians will act like politicians. Overturn contracts, rip up the rule of law, if it appears that doing so will give them an electoral advantage.

The reason that investors are now beginning to consider political risk when investing in the US? Because the US has become the sort of place where you have to worry about political risk when you invest. This is not, to put it mildly, an advertisement either for the US or for American politicians. It will lower investment and that in turn will lower the living standards of Americans in the future. But it gets votes in the short term and that’s what political risk is, see?

]]>Articles by Tim WorstallWhy A-Rod Can Play The Field (And Tiger Can’t)tag:takimag.com,2010:article/1.88482010-02-08T05:05:06Z1999-11-30T00:00:00ZTim Worstalltimworstall@takimag.com

There are some people who can carry off this having a girlfriend in every town thing: sailors for one. There’s also a number who can’t, as Tiger Woods recently found out. Being of that age when the mid-life crisis moves one from simple envy of those who can to trying to work out quite how one can lead me to investigate.

A-Rod for example: I believe he’s something to do with what we English call “rounders”, a game we give up at 11 years of age. But apparently his inability to move on and learn cricket properly hasn’t stopped him from becoming both exceedingly rich and exceedingly famous. They might have something to do with his ability to date and then dump both Madonna, a rock star and Kate Hudson, ex-wife of one (apparently the Black Crowes drug scene was too much even for the daughter of an actress) and then move on to, as we’re told he currently is:

Alex Rodriguez is playing the field like a man possessed in the aftermath of his split with Kate Hudson, and has been on dates with a cavalcade of women in the past two weeks—including a meeting in Manhattan with old flame Madonna.

Sources tell Page Six the Yankee slugger has been seen with a pretty brunette from New York and a blond model in Miami, in addition to a secret rendezvous with the Material Girl while in town two weeks ago.

OK, so, wealth, fame and physical fitness perhaps. However, there are also other examples out there: John Mayer perhaps.

“I can text whatever I want to anybody in the world; I’m not married. I write a lot of dirty text messages to girls, and you’ve never seen any of them. Why? Because if a girl brought a dirty text message from me to the newspapers, they’d say ‘I don’t have an angle here. Someone wants to wear your ass like a hat? Big deal.”

Women as headgear doesn’t particularly entice as my own kink, middle age or not, but given that John Mayer isn’t hugely physically fit, hugely famous nor hugely rich maybe there’s a chance still?

Perhaps we can find the answer in our third example, a certain John Terry. No, none of you will ever have heard of him but in England he’s hugely famous, being captain until this afternoon of the England football side. He’s also hugely wealthy and physically fit. He did indeed have a string of lovers including, in a move that might have been unwise, the girlfriend of one of his team mates. Who he got pregnant and then procured an abortion for.

However, John Terry did not get away with it, when the news came out of his 8 sidelines there was a few days of dithering and then he was sacked as the captain. The newspapers have been full of “John Terry’s Shame” stories all week.

“If you think about it actually it’s all rather sweet. It appears that a politician is required merely not to fall over drunk while voting to keep our approval while something as mild as breaking a marriage vow is grounds for dismissal.”

So of our four (fifth if we include the entirely non-famous, non-rich and non-physically fit such as your humble correspondent) two were able to get away with at least pursuing a harem fit for installation in a seraglio while two were not: John T and Tiger. What is it that marks them out as different from John M and Rod?

Perhaps it’s simply that we’re used to reading about the “loves” (the quotation marks are there because the time spans always seem far too short to support “love” unless we are using the euphemism for sex that we make when adding the word “making”) of Rod and John M in a way that we’re not of the other two? Who would be surprised to hear that either had a new girlfriend? Is it just that, that they are no longer news stories any more but olds stories?

Mr. Mayer to the microphone please:

Tiger Woods’ problems come from him being married.

Ahh, that’s it. As was John Terry of course (and as is your humble correspondent, it turns out that fame and fortune aren’t the limiting factors) and thus the failure of his plans to spread the seed.

If you think about it actually it’s all rather sweet. Quaint even: there was a time when we expected politicians to keep their promises while we accepted that a man might get a little frisky inside marriage. Now it appears that a politician is required merely not to fall over drunk while voting to keep our approval while something as mild as breaking a marriage vow is grounds for dismissal.

Would it surprise you to hear that the New York Times has managed an economics fail? Again? No, I suppose it probably wouldn’t but you will at least be interested in finding out which part of the dismal science they’ve managed to entirely misunderstand I have no doubt.

Big Oil is so big that Royal Dutch Shell is the world’s 25th-biggest economy, bigger than Norway.

No, it isn’t. It’s not even close to that sort of level. This is entirely nonsense, nonsense upon stilts, nonsense that betrays a sad and woeful lack of knowledge about what an economy is and how we count and measure it.

The truth is that Shell is around and about the size of Luxembourg, number 68 or so on the list.

So, what is it that the New York Times has got wrong? Well, basically, they’ve looked at a few numbers, seen some that look about the same and then hared off cock-eyed to their conclusion: about what we expect from children just past the “why’s the sky blue, daddy?” stage.

The GDP of Norway is (I’m rounding everything here, just to conserve the world’s supply of digits) around $400 billion. The turnover of Shell is around $400 billion. Thus Shell is the same size as Norway, right?

“To equate the two numbers is somewhere between the apples and pears thing and comparing apples to Rush Limbaugh: somewhere between inappropriate and surreal.”

No, entirely wrong. GDP is Gross Domestic Product. There are a number of different ways to think about it but the one we want here is that it is the value added in the economy over the year. What it isn’t is the turnover in the economy. Think of housing for a moment: you sell your house (umm, well, if you can at the moment of course) and someone else buys it. That’s a transaction and is it included in GDP? No, it most certainly isn’t. Total sales of houses in the US are around $12 trillion a year and the total economy is $15 trillion: whatever you might have thought of the past few years it isn’t true that housing is 80 percent of the US economy. No, the bits we include in GDP are the bits of added value: the realtors fees, the closing costs, the points you pay the mortgage broker. Yes, I know, tough to think of these as added value but to economists (a strange breed indeed) they are.

However, to get that $400 billion figure for Shell we’re not measuring value added, we’re measuring turnover. So to equate the two numbers is somewhere between the apples and pears thing and comparing apples to Rush Limbaugh: somewhere between inappropriate and surreal.

The value added at a company (and I’ll agree that there are different ways of doing this) is best represented by the profit that they make. Take all the sales, take all the costs, net them off and you’re left with that profit: the value that’s been added by incurring all those costs to make those sales. Shell’s profits are around $30 billion a year. So that’s the number that we want to equate to the GDP of a country and Luxembourg’s GDP is about $30 billion and so Shell is about the size of Luxembourg.

“But, but, wait” I can hear the confused leftist at the back of the lecture hall saying “Shell is still the size of a country and that’s bad, right?”

Well, no, not really sure that this is still bad. Shell employs a couple of hundred thousand rich world people in its business. Luxembourg employs a couple of hundred thousand rich world people in its business as a country. Why should anyone be surprised that a couple of hundred thousand rich world people produce about the same value added even if employed in different ways?

As to the New York Times editorial writers, well, next time they tell us that politicians run things better than markets, that taxes or the minimum wage should be higher, you know, the sorts of things that those arts graduates love to lecture us on, just remember that on matters economic they simply haven’t the first clue of what they’re talking about. They might know where to put, commas, and how to spell stuff but numbers clearly confuse them.

“Tiger Woods in sex rehab clinic” seemed to be all that the newspapers of my native land could talk about one day last week. If you managed to miss the more staid US dailies’ coverage of the momentous event it is simply that Tiger is hanging out at a “clinic” somewhere in Hicksville, The South, getting “treatment” for his sex addiction. I say “clinic” and “treatment” as activities seem to include “art classes, exercise and fitness regimes, shame reduction work, a spirituality group, a grief group, and yoga”. Plus sharing a room and having, horror of horrors, to have to clean it himself. This sounds a great deal more like a New Age retreat center than it does treatment for ambitious and wandering gonads—but we’ll come to that in a moment.

The next day the same papers were full of pieces about whether sex addiction is in fact an addiction. Details of the treatment do amuse: first, a ban on Tiger pleasuring himself for 90 days. The New Puritanism has gone too far if a sporting god and near billionaire isn’t allowed even to play with himself. Indeed, a complete and total ban on sex of any kind might also not be the way to convince a healthy young man to resist any cocktail waitresses who might throw themselves at him. Finally, the revelation that, unlike the others, Tiger gets maid service also raises a snigger: maid service of what?

The greatest surprise to me was that this clinic seems to be unisex: men and women with any (but obviously voracious) sexual habits are treated together—which, again, doesn’t seem likely to lead to a reduction in sexual activity. Perhaps appropriate is a story from a friend who did medical training: one young man was seen trolling for dates amongst those attending the sexual diseases clinic. When asked why, given the obvious probability that they were infectious, the response was that, well, at least the young man did know that they were up for it in theory, even if not right now.

“All this sounds terribly Catholic to me really. Confession, contrition, and penance being the center of that sacrament normally called confession and all those being present in this treatment for “sex addiction”.”

But I think there’s a more serious observation that can be made about this whole hoopla. Sex addiction, whether it’s a disease or not (I think not), clearly and obviously transgresses the boundaries of what the society thinks is acceptable. Even in this very much less religious age, it is a sin against public expectations. And sins, even if they are simply against public expectations, need to be expiated.

Which is where other details of the treatment come in. Apparently Tiger must recount all his transgressions to his wife Elin, in sordid and excruciating detail. He must, as above, serve a period of abstinence, during which he must exercise and meditate (“mens sana in corpore sano”, no?). Then, if all of this is done successfully, he can be forgiven and welcomed back into the arms of his family and the hearts of the public. All of which sounds terribly Catholic to me really. Confession, contrition, and penance being the center of that sacrament normally called confession and all those being present in this treatment for “sex addiction”.

You might, if a cynic like me, simply assume that both the Church and the clinic have hit on the same psychological dramas that need to be played out before wives or the public will forgive. You might be more cynical and think that the clinic has simply copied a system that has worked well for a millenia or more. Or you might simply look at this and think that while organized religion is direct, the belief in a vengeful and omniscient God has declined the form of religion necessary to carry on.

And as to whether sex addiction actually exists or not we might go along with Chesterton. When people stop believing in God they don’t believe in nothing, they believe in anything. The idea that 90 days of enforced celibacy is the way to induce a man to be faithful on day 91 certainly counts as “anything”.